WorldShare Management Services is an integrated suite of library management applications—from acquisitions and circulation, to metadata and license management, resource sharing and analytics—designed to simplify and streamline workflows, reduce costs and create new value for libraries and their users.

"WorldShare Management Services (WMS) fit the strategic direction of our organization," said Kirsten Leonard, PALNI Executive Director. "We wanted to reduce the cost of managing our systems and collections so that we could focus on providing direct support to our students and faculty, and on new projects like institutional repositories. We are already starting projects that we have been dreaming of—our ‘wish lists.' We believe WMS will help us improve services for our users, with greater economy for our institutions."

"We've dedicated our development effort of consortial features to a simple mission statement: WorldShare Management Services preserves and respects the autonomy, privacy and policy differences among members of a group, while at the same time leveraging the opportunities that come with shared data, infrastructure and community," said Andrew K. Pace, Executive Director, OCLC Networked Library Services.

Ms. Leonard said PALNI had been considering a move to a new library management system for more than two years. Several task forces were formed to determine the best course of action, and after careful study, PALNI determined that WMS and OCLC were best equipped to get them to where they wanted to go.

"This is a brave new world, and WMS gives us the best opportunity to set our strategic goals in motion," said Ms. Leonard. "OCLC is committed to developing radical collaboration avenues in our Web-based environment not only to share collections, but also to share processes and staff expertise. We also see that OCLC is strongly committed to exposing library data on the Web and to ensuring the relevance of libraries in the future."

PALNI selected WorldShare Management Services in September. They are currently in the implementation phase, which includes data migration, staff training, and product configuration. PALNI expects to be live with the services in the summer of 2014.

"From what we have seen so far, these services are much easier to use than our current services," said Ms. Leonard. "Our staff has been pleasantly surprised by the ease of use."

Today, more than 170 libraries on three continents—Australia, Europe and North America—are using OCLC WorldShare Management Services which were released for general availability in July 2011. More than 110 more libraries are in the process of implementing the new services. Other library groups are using WorldShare Management Services; PALNI is the first academic group.

About PALNI

The Private Academic Library Network of Indiana was founded in 1992 as one of the first state-wide automated resource sharing networks for private academic libraries. Annual operating costs are shared among the 23 participating small college and seminary libraries throughout the State of Indiana. The system includes a shared online library catalog, as well as subsystems to support each library’s circulation control, technical services, and reference activities. The libraries of the Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) collaborate to enhance the teaching and learning missions of private higher education in Indiana by optimizing resources and services while strengthening leadership and professional development. More about PALNI is at www.palni.org.

About OCLC

Founded in 1967, OCLC is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs. More than 74,000 libraries in 170 countries have used OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend, preserve and manage library materials. Researchers, students, faculty, scholars, professional librarians and other information seekers use OCLC services to obtain bibliographic, abstract and full-text information when and where they need it. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the world’s largest online database for discovery of library resources. Search WorldCat.org on the Web. For more information, visit the OCLC website.

OCLC, OCLC WorldShare, WorldCat, WorldCat.org and WorldShare are trademarks and/or service marks of OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. Third-party product, service and business names are trademarks and/or service marks of their respective owners.